


#1 Grandpa

by ahimsabitches



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Frayja is his executive assistant, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Modern AU, Peeps is CFO of Joe's oil company, this is an au of an au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 18:25:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17249195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahimsabitches/pseuds/ahimsabitches
Summary: I'm kissing 2018 goodbye with a self-indulgent fic that will make sense to a grand total of one person besides me. It's been a rough year. Frayja-- you know her as Keen from Viper in the Garden-- has been through hell too and she deserves some comfort. This is a sequel to "Out of the Office".





	#1 Grandpa

“That's odd,” Richard murmured to himself as he kicked the door shut with his bad foot. “But the front door was locked.” The spill of light into the hallway hadn't been there when he'd left. The kitchen wasn't a place he lingered now that Frayja had moved out. A pulse of anticipation raced through him. “Iskra?” He asked the light, stumping down the dim front hallway. He knocked a slim three legged table with his hip, rattling the small marble sculpture on it. He hadn't really _believed_ it was an ancient Greek dildo that had been up Aristippus' arse himself, but it had made for a good story. 

A better story than an actual dildo.

He rounded the corner, tingling, but the back to him was too broad; the hair too black; the figure too tall to be Iskra. His shoulders sagged and the lightning in him died, but not all the way. “Frayja. What are you doing here? It's...” he glanced at his watch. Quarter of eleven. Had he really been out with Kal for six hours? At least tomorrow was Sunday, and he wasn't all that drunk. “It's late.”

Frayja said nothing. She leaned lopsidedly against the kitchen island, a waist-high marble affair. His brows drew down and together; Frayja didn't  _slump._ Though she moved with precision and grace, she stood like there was a frozen metal rod jammed so far up her arse that it tickled the bottom of her skull. He took a step toward her, pleasure at seeing her transmuting to worry. “Is everything all right?”

Glass clunked on marble. Frayja's head dipped, and her loose hair falling off her shoulders revealed the top half of a green t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. She wore a pair of plain black basketball shorts on her bottom half. Her feet were bare. Richard had only ever seen her in the sharp black-and-white suit he'd had made for her and a lovely but conservative black dress she'd worn to the corporate retreat dinner in Sydney.

Seeing her now, totally un-Frayja, deepened Richard's worry to alarm. He approached her gingerly, not knowing if he'd get just a growl or a mighty lunge if he startled her. The source of the clunking sound was the bottle of vodka whose neck Frayja clutched loosely. He recognized it from his liquor cabinet. Her hair hid her face.

“Fr--”

“I had to get out of the fucking apartment,” she said. Her voice was flat and dull but clear, so either she had just started drinking or she was hiding her drunk better than usual.

“Why?” He asked gently, not expecting an answer. His hand hovered a few inches off her well-muscled shoulder, and it was work not to let it rest on her.

Frayja sighed and swept her hair out of her face. She did not have her sunglasses on, and he wasn't used to seeing her without them either. He leaned forward as much as he dared, which wasn't much, to try to read what of her face he could see. It was blank and empty as her voice. “I don't have anyw...” she trailed off, swallowed hard, and swigged vodka. Grimaced as it went down. “Atlas is in the hospital.”

“ _What?_ ” Richard barked before he could stop himself. “Oh _hell_ , Frayja, I'm...is he...”

“They kicked me out,” she said, coughing a dry laugh.

Richard's heart somersaulted. “What  _happened?”_

Frayja shrugged helplessly. “I don't...it was a blur. I was making dinner and I heard him crying, so I went into his room...” Her voice cracked, and that, more than her posture or her ratty home-clothes, yanked his heartstrings. She cleared her throat explosively, still avoiding his eyes. “I went into his room and he was purple. He was _purple._ I've never seen... he couldn't breathe. His little chest was--” she placed her palm on her chest and patted it rapidly. “I thought he'd swallowed something, or he was choking, but I couldn't find anything in his airways. He...he stopped breathing and I had to--” She gently struck her stomach with a fist. “I took him to the hospital. He wasn't as...purple when we got there, but the people took him straight back. They wouldn't let me go back with him. I had to wait _two goddamn hours_ before someone could tell me if my fucking _son_ was alive or not.”

She snarled this last, her lip curled. Richard sighed and fought his hand away from her shoulder. “Oh Frayja, I'm so sorry. Do you know what's wrong?”

“Other than fluid in his lungs and collapsed alveoli, not really. Not yet.”

“Jesus.”

Frayja sighed miserably and let her head sink into her hands. “He was premature. I should have known he'd have problems like this. I should have taken him to the pediatrician more of--”

“Frayja, stop it,” Richard commanded with the full depth of his voice.

She lowered her hands and turned to him. He ignored the raw, tearful rage in her dark brown eyes.

“Speaking as a parent who's spent the last two and a half years of his life blaming himself for his children's entirely unforeseen and uncontrollable deaths, _this is not your fault._ ”

She held his eyes for a little longer, then swigged vodka. Richard watched her throat bob, a hot, heavy fist squeezing his heart. His own grief, a hard grey vein of calcified cold struck through the space below his heart, threatened to crack the living meat around it and surface again.

No, not now. He would indulge himself later.

Now, he had an upset Frayja to deal with, which was less like comforting a woman in distress and more about soothing a wounded lioness. “Why don't I make us some tea?” He turned to the wooden cabinet behind him.

Frayja snorted. “You don't drink tea.”

“Yes, dear, but _you_ do,” he said, and pulled a yellow box out of one cabinet and a plain white mug from the one beside it.

“I haven't lived here since the summer,” Frayja said, a question in her voice.

Possibly because he was just lazy, or possibly because having things of Frayja's in the house made it a little less lonely, Richard hadn't gotten around to throwing out the little reminders of her that drifted in odd forgotten corners: her favorite tea; the one sleeping-shirt she'd left in her bedroom; a red-and-blue rattle-toy of Atlas' that Richard now kept on the bottom banister post. “Yes, dear,” Richard said, keeping his voice soft and rumbly-low, “but aren't you glad I have it here now?”

“Vodka will do, thank you,” Frayja said from behind him, her voice devoid of affect. It was how she sounded at the office, and hearing it here, now, jarred him. He blinked, refusing to dwell on it. His spine creaked as he leaned laboriously down to the cabinet beside the stove.

“I _know_ I have a kettle...” Richard mumbled to himself. The inside of the cabinet was a bouldery chaos of pots and pans and lids. He pawed through it, unsure if he'd put the kettle there or not.

Frayja moved behind him. The sink turned on. He heaved himself upright, wincing as bolts of pain shot up his back and down his bad leg. Frayja skirted him with easy grace, the kettle in her hand, and flipped the burner on the stove. The gas line ticked; the little pilot flame burst into a blue ring. She set the kettle down on it, wove behind him again, and pulled down a second mug. This one proclaimed “#1GRANDPA” in bold black letters. Iskra had gotten that one for him. He hadn't understood it at all, but he kept that mug for the same reasons he kept Frayja's tea, and would have kept any other of Iskra's detritus if she'd ever had any to leave that didn't belong in the dungeon downstairs, or hadn't already been scarred into his flesh.

With dextrous efficiency, Frayja unwrapped two teabags and deposited one in each mug.

“I thought you were drinking vodka,” he said, smiling with half his mouth.

“And you don't drink tea,” she deadpanned, not looking at him.

Richard leaned on the counter and understood that this was Frayja's way of calming her own beast. Part of him still wanted to reach out because he knew part of her-- a small part-- wanted him to. But whatever hangups she had around touch were hung up damned high, and a soothed lioness could still lunge.

So he stayed put and listened to the kettle whine. He watched Frayja take it off the burner, pour its softly sloshing contents into both mugs, lay napkins over the tops, then lay spoons on top of the napkins. The napkin-spoon arrangement was not necessary in the least; it was just a quirk of Frayja's. He'd witnessed it many times, and, witnessing this simple, delicate ritual again after a long drought of her absence, warmed him through in a way that tea never could.

He'd missed her. Missed them both.

And he realized something else: _she'd_ missed _him_.

He chided himself for not catching on sooner. Why else had she come, if not just to be in his presence, if not to take comfort and strength from someone familiar, whom she trusted? She'd never been forthcoming about her social life, so Richard could never be sure how much of one she actually had. He doubted its existence at all, even if she'd sheathed her _sharp and pointy_ long enough to let someone past a handshake.

Richard talked like Frayja moved, and if he so chose, he could make up for being fat, bald, and old with charisma enough to disarm and intellect enough to engage. And, if those failed, his credit cards never did.

But none of the _friends_ he made that way, male or female, had a spare key or knew how to open the lock on his liquor cabinet or could remember where the kettle was or knew not to use the front right burner because the coil was cracked.

Of course there was Iskra, but attempting to make the title of _friend_ fit her was like trying to fit an elephant seal into a cat carrier.

He smiled at his own analogy and watched the muscles in Frayja's arm glide under her tanned skin as she stirred honey into their tea. _Lioness,_ he thought, and remembered another one of Frayja's leavings he had not erased yet: the hook they'd installed in the living room ceiling to hold her punching bag.

Frayja grabbed the vodka bottle from the island, drew the #1 GRANDPA mug to her, and poured a double shot into it. He lay a large, hairy hand over his mug, the plain white one, before she could pour. Just in case they had to visit the hospital. “No thank you, dear; I've been at it since lunchtime and my gout already hates me.”

She cocked an eyebrow that said _when has that ever stopped you,_ and recapped the vodka bottle.

They sipped together in silence, Richard allowing some of his worry for Frayja to abate, and allowing himself a mental pat on the back for being instrumental in her calming. It was a hell of a thing, to be someone's emotional anchor.

Frayja jerked and slopped tea out of her mug. Richard, startled by the sudden movement, jerked too. She yanked her phone out of her shorts pocket with the hand not holding the tea, snarling when it caught on the loose fabric. “Hello?” she barked, turning her back to Richard. His heart stuttered and kicked a beat of cold blue fear through him; only one place would be calling Frayja at Saturday midnight. The voice on the other end of the phone was incomprehensibly tiny and tinny. Richard watched Frayja's shoulders carefully. They remained immobile for a minute which seemed to last an age. Then they rose and fell with her deep, shaky breath. “Yes, of course. Whatever you need to do.” The phone voice spoke for another several seconds, but Richard relaxed more than Frayja had. _“Do whatever you need to do”_ wasn't something you said to a doctor if your patient had died. But it did not bode particularly well either.

Frayja thanked her interlocutor and lowered her phone. Richard placed his mug down on the counter and waited. Her mug landed on the island with a sharp _clunk_ and she scraped both clawed hands through her hair. He could hear the trembly tears in the breaths she took to steady herself. Frayja doled out visible emotional responses that weren't anger only a little more frequently than Iskra graced him with her presence, and this was just part of Frayja. So he waited for her to reel herself back in, forcing his own impatience down.

“They moved him into the PICU,” she said after a while. “He stopped breathing twice and they--” her voice cracked on the word _twice_. She balled both hands into fists and mashed them into her face, her breath fluttery and tearful.

 _To hell with it._ Richard took a lumbering step toward her and lay his hand on her shoulder. It felt like touching a warm power line. He expected her to throw him off or snap at him, but she did something then he did not expect.

She whirled and threw her arms around his neck with such force that, for a half-second, he thought she meant to choke him.

His mind blank and buzzing with shock, he stood rigid, his hands outspread, Frayja clinging to him with her face burrowed into his collar. Fear and surprise subsided. Sympathy for Frayja grew in their place, and stirred the node of his own grief to life. Richard slowly lowered his arms until they rested on the rolling plain of Frayja's back. She smelled like vodka, sweat, and stale adrenaline. Her hair tickled his nose and got into his mouth. Hugging her felt like cuddling a pile of rebar. But he smiled and squeezed her a little anyway, giving her what comfort he could, and getting no small measure back.

Because though Frayja reminded him much and often of Vic, she was not her. Nor was she a daughter or sister or whatever Iskra was or anything Richard had a name for beyond _family._ And, really, what other name did they need?

“Shall we go to the hospital?”

Frayja shook her head against his shoulder and mumbled something.

“What was that, dear?”

As if surfacing from a dive, she flung herself out of his arms, all but clawing the tears off her face. “No, I said. If they kicked me out of the regular pediatrics unit, they're sure as hell not going to let me into the PICU. At least not until visiting hours tomorrow.”

“Which are?”

Frayja looked at him with red and puffy eyes. “I'll go myself. You don't have to take me.”

“My motivations are mostly selfish, I assure you. I'm worried for the boy as well.”

Miraculously, Frayja's mouth tipped up in a small, wry smile. “Nice save.”

Richard chuckled, caught, and picked up his tea. “Two birds with one stone, then.”

“No, really, I can drive myself. I'd rather do that.”

“Fine,” Richard acquiesced. The weight of exhaustion and the tail-end of a day-long drunk began to weigh on him, especially his bad leg. He would not go to bed until Frayja was settled, though, so he leaned against the counter and propped his foot up.

In unconscious mimic of him, she leaned against the island, tossed the rest of her tea back in two gulps and licked a drip of honey off the G in GRANDPA. “Is there still a spare blanket in the hall closet?” she asked.

The gears in Richard's mind ground noisily. “Er. Yes, wh--”

“I'm too drunk to drive. I don't think I'll sleep much, but I probably should try. Mind if I take the couch?”

“Frayja, dear, why not just sleep in your old room?”

It was her turn to pause. “I... oh. I thought you'd... since I moved out, I didn't know if you had... changed--”

Richard shook his head. “No, it's exactly how you left it. No more crib, though, since there's no more need.”

A shadow passed over Frayja's face. Richard winced.

“Oh, Frayja, I'm sorry,” he said, biting back the impulse to hug her again. “That was..unfortunate diction on my part.”

Frayja smiled sadly, which was somehow worse than if she'd bared her teeth. “It's okay.” She approached him and lay a hand on his shoulder. “But... couch.” She squeezed. Her grip was solid and strong; her eyes dry and clear. _Lioness._ “Thank you, Richard. You're not so bad for an old capitalistic bastard.” Something cylindrical and warm dropped into his hand. “Please come visit. Atlas'll want to see you when he wakes up. He likes you a lot better than I do,” she said, the smile audible in her voice. Her hand slid off his shoulder. He listened to her silky, catlike tread down the hall, then glanced down at the mug in his hand.

#1 GRANDPA, it proclaimed.

 


End file.
